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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25508947">Role Reversal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo'>ottermo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>As Prompted [100]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Humans (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Post S3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:27:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,148</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25508947</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe receives an odd phone call from a teacher at Sam and Sophie’s new school.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>As Prompted [100]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/360089</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Role Reversal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the Humans Challenge prompt with the same title. I opted for inconsequential silliness :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The phone rang in the middle of Joe’s kitchen adventure - he had declined Stanley’s help earlier, but just now, already trying to juggle three separate stages of the cooking process at once, he was wishing for an extra pair of hands to stop the infernal ringing from pounding through his skull.</p><p>“Hello?” he said, balancing the phone on his shoulder.</p><p>“Is this Mr Hawkins?”</p><p>The tone was formal, but friendly enough. Joe returned one of the saucepans back on the hob. “Yeah, hi. Who’s speaking?”</p><p>“This is Jill Chatton, from the Mersham Academy. I just wanted to give you some feedback on Sam and Sophie’s first day.”</p><p>“Oh, right. Great.” Potentially great, anyway, Joe thought wryly. He’d had second, third, fourth and even fifth thoughts about putting Sam in school, and this could really go either way.</p><p>“Don’t sound so nervous. They both did very well. I think they enjoyed themselves. Tomorrow, of course, will be the real test - the first day is always a bit more relaxed.”</p><p>“Of course.” Somehow he could hear a “<em>but</em>…” coming. Oh, God, what had they done? Had they staged some kind of schoolyard coup? Had someone made a ‘dolly’ joke at Sam’s expense and been paid back with a punch on the nose from Sophie? She’d done something like that at the last school, and that was before she’d even met Sam and taken on the role of his fiercest protector.</p><p>“There’s just one thing I wanted to check with you.”</p><p>Here we go, Joe thought, stirring the tomato sauce with a little more nervous intensity than was probably required.</p><p>“I think we’ve had a bit of a mix-up, our end. We knew we were getting a synth child and a human child, so the arrangements were all put in place and the other children were warned to expect somebody a little different. But for some reason we thought <em>Sam</em> was the synthetic. It’s not a problem, of course… we just wanted to correct the error in the school files.”</p><p>“Um… come again?”</p><p>Jill Chatton chuckled. “It’s funny, isn’t it? We were expecting a little human girl and a synthetic boy, but of course it’s the other way round!”</p><p>Joe set down the wooden spoon and took the phone in his hand, as if that would somehow make things make sense. “No, you– you had it right the first time. Sophie’s my daughter. Sam is a synthetic child we adopted last year, after the battle of the Railyard…”</p><p>“Oh.” That shut her up for a second. “Yes, I do remember the Railyard being in the news, but I… do you mean to say the little boy, Sam, he <em>is</em> the synthetic after all?”</p><p>Joe heaved a sigh, then realised he must sound irritated. “Sorry, that wasn’t aimed at you. I’m huffing at Sophie, mostly. She loves putting on the synth act, and she’s gotten really good at it. I had no idea she was going to pull this stunt. Yes, Sam’s the synth. Again, he’s got very good at faking human.”</p><p>“I see.”</p><p>This was followed by a silence which, to Joe, seemed to last about three years. He wondered if this was it, already - it had taken long enough to find a school willing to take on a synth pupil, even with the extra funding from the Mia Foundation. He’d almost rather Sophie had punched a brat. No, that was stupid, of course he wouldn’t, but after all the work they’d done to get this place…</p><p>A strange clucking sound emitted from the other end of the phone, and after a few seconds Joe realised this was Jill Chatton laughing, properly this time. Raucously, in fact.</p><p>“She was so convincing!” she spluttered. “She– she asked me if she really had to go to Chemistry since she had already memorised the periodic table, and proceeded to reel them off!”</p><p>Joe began to see the funny side. “Forgive me, Ms Chatton, but… are you a Chemistry teacher?”</p><p>“Heavens, no.”</p><p>“Then she was probably making it up as she went along.”</p><p>“Ah, perhaps.” Jill chuckled again. “I did think I’d never heard of ‘Niskanium’ before.”</p><p>“Yes, I wonder how she came up with that,” said Joe, not wondering at all. “Well, I’ll speak to them when they get home. I’m very sorry if they caused you any trouble.”</p><p>“Oh, no trouble at all. If anything, it seems that Sam will fit in absolutely perfectly. Nobody smelt a rat all day. Now I come to think of it, I’m sure he <em>sneezed</em> in registration.”</p><p>“Yes, he can do all sorts.” Joe thought fondly of the two of them, who were thick as thieves these days, and had begged him to enter them as twins and not even mention that Sam was a green-eyes. Maybe they hadn’t done it purely for mischief: he wouldn’t put it past Sophie to run the con as a way to show Sam he had nothing to worry about in the new environment.</p><p>“Well, Mr Hawkins, you certainly have a unique family. And we’re very glad you chose to send Sophie and Sam to the Mersham Academy. Now, I can’t decide if I ought to set my colleagues straight or not, you know. It might be it interesting to see how long the children can keep it up, but it would hardly be professional…”</p><p>“Tell them, but see how many of them are willing to play along. I’d love to hear Sophie talk her way out of projecting a memory onto the interactive whiteboard, for a start.”</p><p>“Mr Hawkins, I like the way you think.”</p><p>Joe grinned. “Someone’s got to.” He looked up, through the kitchen window, to see two familiar figures approaching the end of the drive. “Ah, here comes trouble. They’re home.”</p><p>“I’ll let you confront them, then. Thank you for your time, Mr Hawkins.”</p><p>“And you.”</p><p>Joe rang off, and temporarily deposited the cheese grater on the kitchen counter. He went out to meet them coming up the path, and sure enough, Sophie was all parallel lines and even stare, while Sam swaggered along, hands in pockets, and apparently chewing gum, for goodness’ sake.</p><p>“Good day, you two?”</p><p>Sophie balked upon seeing him, and immediately corrected her posture to something a little less rigid. “Hi, Dad. It was fine, yeah.”</p><p>Sam, too, reset. “We found it satisfactory, thank you, Joe.”</p><p>“Oh, right. No problems, then?”</p><p>“Nothing to report.”</p><p>“Great. Well, I’m just in the middle of making dinner. I forget, Sam, do you like tomato sauce, or shall I leave it off yours?”</p><p>Joe turned to go inside, leaving the troublesome twins to look at one another suspiciously.</p><p>“Oh, and Sophie, your charging cable’s in a tangle, make sure you don’t go too low before you sort it out, I know what you’re like.”</p><p>He returned to the kitchen with a very smug grin on his face.</p>
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